Legitimate EMD but penalised?

[StudioVision]

Hi all,

One of my clients has got an EMD penalty on their domain but it's an EMD as it's their company name! Do you have any idea how we can rectify this as the SEO company they use (a very reputable UK company) has said it would be easier to start using another domain :?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

 

[Murray]

Hi all,

One of my clients has got an EMD penalty on their domain but it's an EMD as it's their company name! Do you have any idea how we can rectify this as the SEO company they use (a very reputable UK company) has said it would be easier to start using another domain :?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

PM me the domain and some more details if possible and I will take a look for you if you like.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Hi all,

One of my clients has got an EMD penalty on their domain but it's an EMD as it's their company name! Do you have any idea how we can rectify this as the SEO company they use (a very reputable UK company) has said it would be easier to start using another domain :?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

There is no such thing as an "EMD penalty".

 

[Systreg]

There is no such thing as an "EMD penalty".

I'm guessing he means that all the back link anchor texts are the same emd word/words from every link, and they got clobbered for that?

 

[Retired_Member38]

I'm guessing he means that all the back link anchor texts are the same emd word/words from every link, and they got clobbered for that?

You could get whacked for too many links of the same anchor text, no matter whether it matched up with your domain name or not.

It sounds like someone, somewhere either doesn't have a clue what they're talking about or there has been a bit of an error in communication. I would go back to this 'very reputable' seo company and get them to clarify the situation. Then if you need further help, post exactly what they said here.

 

[Systreg]

You could get whacked for too many links of the same anchor text, no matter whether it matched up with your domain name or not.

Yes, I know what you mean, but the person who passed on the information to StudioVision could have been under the impression that it was an emd penalty, rather than just a load of same anchor text back links and put 2+2 together and got 5.

I'm sure StudioVision will give further details.

 

[Murray]

As I recall, might be wrong, the last time I saw a site get hit for their company/domain name (not a money keyword) it was because of a manual action rather than anything algorithmic.

Any messages in your webmaster tools?.

 

[StudioVision]

Yeah sorry guys it's the anchor text that's causing the issue but the company name includes the words used in the anchor text. Sorry for not explaining it correctly.

Craig

 

[Retired_Member38]

I think first you need to decide if the seo company are reputable or not.

If they are, and they know what they are doing, you can't realistically expect free advice on a forum when we don't even know what url we are talking about, to be better than fully paid advice from someone who has the url and actually look at it in depth...

 

[StudioVision]

They're one of the biggest companies in the UK so yeah, they're reputable. And i'm after a solution, if somebody has a solution then paying for it isn't a problem.

 

[pugyrob]

Difficult to answer without the url, if they called their company "car insurance quotes ltd" and they are getting loads of car insurance quote anchors it is to be expected they would get punished for that term.

I would bet heavily that it is not as squeaky clean as it sounds though in the op

Contact link owners and get the anchors changed seems the obvious step but again I imagine there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

As for truly reoutable seo agencies there arent many!! I have had many link buying requests from most of the big ones

 

[FWSJay]

They're one of the biggest companies in the UK so yeah, they're reputable. And i'm after a solution, if somebody has a solution then paying for it isn't a problem.

Why do you expect them to be reputable because they are a big company? Natwest, Nominet, BBC etc all big companies and none reputable

 

[StudioVision]

Why do you expect them to be reputable because they are a big company? Natwest, Nominet, BBC etc all big companies and none reputable

Haha fair point mate

 

[Murray]

Reputable SEO company is a bit of an oxymoron sadly.

 

[Edwin]

If their site is "interesting" enough that it's attracting genuine, unasked for natural links, then that's a clue that they may be able to "guide" the way people link to it.

For example (and there's so little info to work with I'm taking wild swings in the dark here) if there are distinct sub-sections of the site, each of which stands on its own right as an "interesting" place to visit/link to, then they could try varying some of the on-page clues, like the main H1 title and intro text, to influence how people might write the link.

For example, if the site was about "fishing" then they could have a page about something to do with "angling". If the "angling" keyword is prominent all over the page, and the title is a nice tidy summary of the page, people may choose to use the title as the link text.

On the other hand, if the site's bland, corporate, boring, etc. and every link has been "farmed" in some way (paid placements, paid articles, etc.) rather than acquired naturally then yes, the SEO firm has messed up.

 

[murph]

I've not heard of anyone reversing an EMD penalty to date. If they need to proceed with that domain, I'd focus all efforts on diluting the over optimised key phrase links with image and URL links. And hope they roll out a refresh of whichever update hit it!

 

[Retired_Member38]

I've not heard of anyone reversing an EMD penalty to date.

I've never seen a unicorn - which is fair enough, as like an EMD penalty, they don't exist

And hope they roll out a refresh of whichever update hit it!

If they have been manually penalised then that won't help, they can wait till the unicorns come home and it won't help them.

 

[murph]

I've never seen a unicorn - which is fair enough, as like an EMD penalty, they don't exist

If they have been manually penalised then that won't help, they can wait till the unicorns come home and it won't help them.

Hmm, fraid there was 100% an update that targeted EMDs on competitive key phrases.

 

[Murray]

I hope it's alright to say this.. if you have a problem Studio just say and I will remove it.

I've seen the site, it has problems from it's links (low quality) to it's content (a lot is duplicate from other sites, but one main one).

It's a partial match domain and was hit for the keyword.

All pretty standard.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Hmm, fraid there was 100% an update that targeted EMDs on competitive key phrases.

They merely turned down the benefit that exact matches get - they didn't penalise anything. So to call anything an "emd penalty" is pretty unhelpful, as its not even close to what actually happened.

This was also a while back now - if the OP's client has been penalised recently, then it is clearly nothing to do with that update. If it was when that update happened, then both the OP and the seo company are failing to understand they haven't been penalised at all. An algorithm has just been tweaked to give exact match domains less benefit.